Re: Replace outdated social models in OWL2 primer

On Mon, 17 Mar 2025 at 16:10, Shaw, Ryan <ryanshaw@unc.edu> wrote:

>
> > On Mar 17, 2025, at 11:49 AM, Marco Neumann <marco.neumann@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > I believe the best way forward is to replace the "rules" with new
> "rules" and supersede past actions with new ones. The historical record,
> the old laws, standards, etc., should be kept as a reference to evaluate
> documents and the process of evolution in a historical context.
>
> I agree, and this is essentially what I was suggesting. The W3C already
> does an exemplary job doing this with whole documents, such as versions of
> (what might become) recommendations. But its approach is a bit sclerotic
> when it comes to more minor changes, such as updating examples.
>
> In this specific case, it would be interesting to rework the examples to
> demonstrate how OWL can mediate between two incompatible views of the world
> in order to allow partial communication between them. (Something we are
> already in practical need of.)
>

I'd say RDF rather than OWL (or RDFS) here. The "two tier" schema approach
we have, with vocabulary definition defined in RDFS/OWL and then the
possibility of various kinds of application-specific validation by the
likes of SHACL and ShEx --- this has a lot of power. We can agree on common
vocabulary and then handle a certain amount of disagreement at the
validation level using graph shapes.

This is a longstanding theme in RDF's history, e.g. see
https://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-PICS-Statement (RDF was originally "PICS-NG",
https://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-pics-ng-metadata).

"The Web, through PICS implementations, ought to support access to a
variety of labeling systems that reflect the diversity of moral and
cultural values held by those that use the Net."

At least that  text from 1998 isn't too dated...

Dan



> I use the current OWL2 Primer in my teaching, but only in a negative way,
> as an example of misunderstanding data modeling as describing “what is
> clear to any human reader” rather than as describing some specific
> community’s consensus or dictate regarding how describe some part of the
> world relevant to them.
>
>
>
>